TIGERS
The colored tigers (citrus tiger, firetiger, tangtiger, etc) we feel originated here at Draggintails as no one in the world we know of had previously dedicated time or effort to isolating the animals that would reproduce this trait....this was an unpopular and undesirable dragon in the old days...and a few times I was advised to not breed them because they could not be sold...yep, true. The dragons with bars were being exclusively weeded out (not bred) even by some others that were breeding at that time because they were not a favorite of the consumer pet market, however small, at that time. The patternless dragons were mostly favored in the later 90s and early 2000s. I had to give away "for free" tiger babies for years because they were not wanted.
I have read information on other websites with lineage information and that information is incorrect. I started truly working on the "blue barred dragons" tiger in 1997 ..ours did not have blue bars back then....they were dark grey/brown (some oranges here and there) animals and some had blackish brown bars....our dragons were acquired from a friend of Dad's a few years prior (Bert Langerwerf) none passed this trait to all his progeny or even a few of his progeny with regularity. Even when breeding two visual tiger barred animals together sometimes less than half the clutch or even none would show this patterning and if those babies showing bars were kept back to try and produce this trait....they were similarly unsuccessful.
One particular dragon that came from my Dad's stock which was an orange barred dragon with a blueish grey belly and light colored iris named "KayCee". He had a "digit" at the end of his tail (not a tail nip probably part of evolution my vet said..not sure) and he was bred to several females and 100% of the progeny from him had heavy tiger patterning and about 30% have that digit in the tail. These offspring were bred over the years to different colors of dragons with the same result. All offspring had barring. The progeny with the minimal barring when bred to a non tiger produced the same result as an extreme tiger..all offspring had barring..some minimal some heavy. Tigers can show in several ways/colors: Translucents, Fire Tiger, Rainbow Tiger, Citrus Tiger, Tangerine Tiger, white Tiger, etc. While we have animals here that have tiger bars some will not predictably reproduce this pattern and it is a visual trait. These are not labeled as tigers here and may be advertised as a dragon with blue barring, they will not be called Tigers. If the dragon has come from the tiger lineage that reproduces this trait, it will be labeled as a tiger. Citrus Tigers resulted from KayCee progeny. Draggintails Citrus Tigers can be seen everywhere. I began exporting them when they were established to France, Spain, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, Belgium, Austria, Japan, Thailand, Scotland, England and Ireland and from there they have spread all over the globe. They can be spotted in every colony as they are one of the most recognizable dragons around. The most famous of the Citrus Tigers was a female named Shamy..not the most yellow of my dragons, however, she produced the most electrifying tigers ever for that time ........clients from Europe would fly here for Shamy parties to hand pick her babies every year when she produced her clutches. She has passed on now, but her progeny are still here with me.
HYPO TANGS
The tangs are a result of crossing my Dad's Cletus (red/blood) and a yellowish green female. The progeny were safety cone orange..we didn't know what to think. Now, at this time there were not a lot of hypos to speak of and these were especially clean and orange. We then crossed these out to the black nailed ghosts (called ghosts back then but are simply snows or a light colored normal). This pairing resulted in some of the most prolific dragons we have ever had. The nicest development of this bloodline was later on when we had hypo citrus from Goldfinger and crossed the tangs into this hypo citrus..the progeny were tangerine and all het hypo, they took off from there. One of the most famous of the hypotangs was "Juilo" a large hypotang x redcitrus male that did a great job breeding for quite a few years. This line has produced with regularity "smooth" scaled dragons although they have no leatherback in the bloodline and good number of paradox dragons.
RED CITRUS
Red Citrus is not a red crossed to a yellow. Apollo one of our yellow citrus males was bred to numerous yellow females and the result was 100% reddish orange dragons with high yellow undertones, no solid yellow dragons from him......(his progeny did/does produce yellow citrus and the "reddish ones" in thier clutches alike). This would be fine if Apollo was actually a red dragon that hatched out yellow, however, he was one of our own Citrus dragons.
We could not market these dragons as "Citrus" or "Red" even though they were Citrus x Citrus bearded dragons because they don't breed out like a red dragon or a yellow dragon...and back in that day people were very intent on buying dragons to breed so they could make money. So, we had to ID the progeny in a way we would understand what would happen if we outcrossed them....this was just for our own record keeping purposes.
Breeding a yellow to a red does not give you the same look. Red Citrus helped to give the Hypotangs a glow later on and it is a cross I like to do. Upon exporting them to a few new European customers around 2005-2007, they were renamed by them to "coral" and "inferno". You can spot them from the bright red orange body and yellow legs/belly and yellow tipped scales no matter what they are renamed. Europeans crossing these red citrus to reds have dimmed some of the yellow underglow , but still plenty are born with high yellow undertones from these crosses.
To be called a Red Citrus here the dragon is a citrus x citrus. We will pair the Red Citrus to a yellow citrus (not a cross, but a generational yellow x yellow ) always to create a next generation of Red Citrus. If a Red Citrus is paired to a red or a white or a tiger or a zero or any other type of dragon....those babies are called red citrus x tiger or whatever the cross is. The babies are only called Red Citrus if it was a citrus pairing. Again, this is for record keeping here...most breeders have their ways of establishing "labels" and this is simply one color label we use .